Film: “They Dropped Right Out of the Sky!”
It hasn’t been a good week for science fiction at the movies. On Tuesday The New Yorker reported that Universal Pictures nixed Pan’s Labyrinth auteur Guillermo Del Toro’s $150 million live-action adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s novella “At the Mountains of Madness” because the filmmaker refused to tone down the content from a “hard R” to a box office-friendly PG-13. What angers me about this turn of events is not the studio’s concern that, according to New Yorker reporter Daniel Zalewski, the film would have to gross at least $500 million worldwide in order to make a profit. No, what truly sickens me to the core is the fact that, while a project from one of the world’s most visionary filmmakers is nipped in the bud, a mind-numbingly awful film like Battle: Los Angeles gets made for $100 million and is aggressively promoted by its studio.
The Columbia Pictures release, one of three films I’m reviewing this week, tries to convey what a real alien invasion would feel like, but by telling the story from the point of view of a U.S. Marine platoon fighting space invaders in decimated La La Land, director Jonathan Liebesman (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning) and screenwriter Christopher Bertolini (The General’s Daughter) have chosen the least interesting perspective imaginable to such a cataclysmic event. It would have helped, of course, if they had compelling characters for viewers to empathize with, but despite a cast that includes such A-listers like Aaron Eckhart and Michelle Rodriguez, we’re stuck with a handful of cyphers in a generic us-against-them scenario.
First impression upon meeting Staff Sgt. Michael Nantz (Eckhart): The man’s got drive. He brings on the pushups like a man slightly younger than his fortysomething years. He’s also haunted, we soon learn, by the fact that he recently led his men – many of them still in their teens – to their deaths. Now he faces retirement, a short-lived notion once news channels begin clogging up with reports of meteors set to hit more than twenty major cities across the globe. Just when he thought he was out, a screenwriter’s lame machinations pull him back in. Could this possibly be a chance to – wait for it – redeem himself?
“This is not a meteor shower, Marines,” yells Nantz’s superior, in case we weren’t paying attention. (I, for one, was scribbling furiously in my notebook, because that seemed to be a more productive usage of my time than simply staring dumbfounded at the screen.) Their mission: to prevent these hostile visitors from taking over the movie capital of the world, and therefore enabling numbskull executives to continue producing excrement like Battle: Los Angeles. Soon after, a plethora of explosions and gunfire start giving the auditorium’s speakers quite the workout…and the filmmakers reveal their true agenda as recruiting officers for the U.S. Armed Forces. How conservative are their politics? I was counting the minutes to see the Bible make a cameo appearance. It took less than half an hour. Women are virtually invisible in Liebesman’s testosterone-fueled worldview. Rodriguez’s character, Technical Sgt. Elena Santos, doesn’t even appear until nearly an hour into the film, and then she’s mostly an ineffectual plot device.
So what about the aliens? Lukas Ettlin’s sloppy handheld camerawork prevents us from taking a good look at the creatures. There’s nothing otherworldly about these interplanetary attackers, no unusual modus operandi that would spark some life into the story. When the soldiers carry a wounded specimen back to their hiding place inside the West Los Angeles Police Department, their only concern as they crack open its chest cavity and dig through layers upon layers of viscera is to find out how to kill it. What I could discern from the dying alien’s grunts was that it wanted to be put out of its agony just so he wouldn’t have to endure Bertolini’s inane dialogue. The audience at the preview screening I attended wasn’t so lucky.
The aesthetic of Battle: Los Angeles has been described as Black Hawk Down meets District 9, but that would be a insult to both of these films. To me, it suggests what Michael Bay would have done if he’d gotten his grubby hands on Starship Troopers, only that film’s satirical take on military hero worship has been replaced here by a humorless, unquestioning glorification of Armed Forces bravery. It’s a Ridley Scott war film without the visual poetry, Paul Verhoeven sci-fi without the tongue-in-cheek irreverence. It’s two hours of unrelenting, shoddily executed combat porn with zero sense of wonder. And that ludicrous PG-13 the film garnered? The ratings board can stick it where the sun don’t shine.
I know I’m damning Disney’s Mars Needs Moms with faint praise by saying it’s not nearly as bad as Battle: Los Angeles, but this weekend’s second sci-fi movie release does, indeed, play like a missed opportunity, a case of some intriguing elements yielding thoroughly average results. The animated feature is the latest and, as it happens, final offering from ImageMovers Digital studios. (Disney announced last year that it was shutting down the company after production ended on this film.) I’m not the biggest fan of performance capture, the animation technique favored by co-founder Robert Zemeckis in films like The Polar Express and his version of A Christmas Carol. I echo the detractors’ complaints: The character’s eyes in these films are soulless, and it feels as if you were watching zombies. In films like Monster House and Zemeckis’s Beowulf, though, one could appreciate the potential for this technology when it’s paired with a solid script.
The source material this time is “Mars Needs Moms!,”another children’s book, but capturing the whimsical sensibility of its creator, Bloom County cartoonist Berkeley Breathed, proves to be a challenge the filmmakers are unable to overcome. The 3-D adventure kicks into gear when nine-year-old Milo (the voice of Seth Green, a few octaves higher), fed up with his mother’s nagging, wishes she never existed. Unbeknownst to the players in this domestic quarrel, an ugly, egocentric Martian ruler (Mindy Sterling, coming across like the result of E.T. and Anna Wintour’s scandalous love affair) has been keeping tabs on mommie dearest (Joan Cusack). Later than night, Milo goes to her room to apologize for his hurtful remarks…only to discover an empty bed and a spaceship outside the house.
Milo stows away in the nick of time, and what begins to show a hint of promise quickly turns mundane once our young protagonist makes it to the Red Planet. A series of daring escapes leads him to meet Gribble (Balls of Fury‘s Dan Fogler), a wisecracking overweight nerd who would up in the same predicament as Milo decades ago when his own mother was kidnapped. He also befriends Ki (Elizabeth Harnois), an insufferably chipper graffiti artist whose day job is being the evil ruler’s personal assistant, as well as some underground furry Martians who like to dance and imitate Jar-Jar Binks. Once we realize why Martians want Milo’s mom, though, the film’s unflattering portrayal of a dictatorial matriarchy left a bad taste in my mouth.
The culprits here are writer-director Simon Wells (great-grandson of that H.G. Wells) and his wife/screenwriting collaborator Wendy. They took Breathed’s picture book and, along with the exclamation point at the end of the title, removed the author’s winsome charm, the very element that prevented his story from feeling like readers were being taught a very condescending life lesson, one that could understandably be perceived as misogynist. What we’re left with is a by-the-numbers, sub-Spielbergian space adventure with a robust visual style and some rather icky gender politics. How does Milo perceive Martians? “The hairy guys are good, and the uniforms (females) are bad.” Cue the film’s alternate title: Men are from Mars, Women Are Castrating Despots.
Okay, so it’s a lousy weekend for new releases at the mall cineplex. May I suggest a better alternative? I’m so glad you asked. I’m proud to announce that the Miami Beach Cinematheque is open for business at its new location on the ground floor of the Historic City Hall on Washington Avenue. Founder and director Dana Keith has filled out his March screening calendar with some top-notch arthouse titles, most of which (Mike Leigh’s Another Year, Documentary Feature Oscar nominee Waste Land) I’ve already reviewed here. If you’re only going to pick one movie to see at this splendid venue this month, I say Carlos, Olivier Assayas’s five-and-a-half-hour epic chronicle of the rise and fall of Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (aka Carlos the Jackal). The three-part saga, which was made for French TV and aired last October in the Sundance Channel, nabbed the Golden Globe for Best Miniseries in January, and it’s anchored by topliner Édgar Ramírez, who is sensational in five languages. Don’t let the film’s length discourage you. Assayas didn’t waste a single frame. His pièce de résistance is a 66-minute depiction of Carlos’s 1975 raid on the meeting of OPEC ministers in Vienna. The sequence is tense, riveting and flawlessly realized, much like the rest of this must-see film.
Carlos screens at the new Miami Beach Cinematheque this weekend only. For showtimes and tickets go to mbcinema.com. Battle: Los Angeles and Mars Needs Moms open Friday in wide release. I’m counting on you, Rango, to keep Battle: Los Angeles out of the top spot.
